Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)
Six word review: Doesn't really work as a book.
"Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure." These come from Smith Magazine.
The format does not lend itself to a book. It works well for a web page, but five of these per page is not a satisfying book. If anything is profound, it is lost in the crowd, and it would be better set apart.
The quality varies. Sturgeon's law applies, but that is fine when the cost per attempt is so low. Five or ten good ones in an entire book would be promising. With editing, from however many the web site receives, you might want a better noise:signal ratio. I suspect that most evaluations are idiosyncratic, based on what you read into the six words and what resonates with you.
Smith Magazine brings you autobiography for the Twitter generation. Go nuts.
Amazon link
Monday, March 31, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Last Day by Dave Sim and Gerhard
Cerebus, volume 16
Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)
You could do worse than to read the first half of Cerebus. You could do better than to read the second half.
This is Cerebus's Last Day. An aged and senile religious leader, he spends his last day in his bedroom, talking to himself and trying to see his son one last time.
There are two things going on in this book. There is the story of Cerebus's last day. There is also quite a bit about Dave Sim and his view of the world, partly connected to and partly taking over the story. Of these two, the story is the better part.
To get the most from the story, if you read this, I recommend skipping anything that looks like a block of text. Those are Dave Sim, not Cerebus. That means the introduction, prologue (through page 40), and annotations. Cerebus's last day is much clearer without having those intrude. All you need from the prologue is that Cerebus has dreamed a new book of scripture, one that goes from the creation of the universe through the end of all humanity; reading Chapter 8 of the prologue will make the last few pages of the book clearer, but all you really need is that "going into the light" is probably Hell, while having the will to reject the light is freedom and realization of the divine purpose.
It is not a spoiler to say that Cerebus dies. His death was foretold years and years ago, both in the story and out. The question is how that happens. I think it fair to say that this is not how Cerebus would have wanted it. Such is life.
As a story, it is small and fairly weak. It is intentionally slow, using film techniques to draw out action and show how slowly everything is going. I suppose taking an entire year's worth of comics to show one day makes it redundant to mention that things will take a while, but some people have very action-packed days. There can be many events, or at least many significant thoughts.
Here, not so much. Things have come to a poor end for Cerebus. The nation and church that he ran have long since fallen under others' dominions. Things have gone down the tubes, and his last actions and thoughts fall safely within the categories of futile, pitiful, and self-defeating. This is not going to be a fun ride, and it is going to drag on longer than even its participants wish.
A few examples? We spend four pages watching Cerebus pick up a piece of paper. Other page-long adventures include putting on pants, climbing into a chair (a few times), and attempting flatulence. Meanwhile, we are steadily losing background as Cerebus is losing focus.
The backgrounds, I should note, and great. Gerhard always excels. Dave Sim notes that backgrounds fade partially to show Cerebus's fading but partially to save drawing time before they lose heart. It works. If you want all of Gerhard's work in this book in a nutshell, follow the band around the covers of the book. That is Cerebus's room. Above it you will see the external view.1
Neither artist's work is particularly on display in this book. We have lots of negative space, black or white, and most of the images are of the same things (the room, aged Cerebus). To that extent, it fails as a comic book/graphic novel. This part of the story might have excelled in a different medium.
Dave Sim's art is fine as well, but most of it seems to be a heavily wrinkled Cerebus; I should appreciate the fine detail work, but given the annotations, I think Mr. Sim understands that much of it was done for their own satisfaction, rather than with the expectation that the audience will notice. The last issue or two worth, though, has really great Dave Sim art. Once Cerebus is in bed, things work much better.
In terms of the story, note that most of a century has passed since we had a story. The previous volume had a long time lapse, and this does it one better by skipping over a half-century in which Cerebus got married and had a child, now long since grown. It is an unusual storytelling choice to skip that, in favor of using a year's worth of issues on one day. Then again, marriage and family life are not interesting subjects for the author, except as tragic farce.
And as for that last day: rough way to end a twenty-six year project. The trajectory started heading downward in the vicinity of half-way through, and it accelerated, until we end in a mud puddle, unable even to wallow. Ozymandias had a better long run.
I am wrapping story commentary there. I assume you have already read the earlier volumes, or else why would you care how it all ends? The last volume stands on its own surprisingly well, since almost every character from the rest of the series is dead. You could start fresh here, knowing nothing. Don't.
On to author commentary. Gah.
On the first page, Dave Sim notes that he has "come up with The Origin of Everything (aka The Unified Theory which Einstein spent his intellectual life pursuing)," but this discovery has been suppressed by a Marxist-feminist conspiracy that runs the world/media/culture (unclear on that last part). This conspiracy is actively ignoring him in the hopes that he goes away, but he does not know how they will react when that plan fails.
I think that analysis speaks for itself, so I note that The Origin of Everything reads a bit like The Apocryphon of John, with anti-feminist overtones and a bit more explicit cosmology. The level of scientific understanding inherent is explained in the annotations: he wants to know what the universe is doing, not why one might or might not believe this account, working under the assumption that whatever astronomers and cosmologists have discovered will line up with his existing narrative. The science is explicitly fudged for storytelling purposes, which are metaphorical anyway, but note that the origin on the universe described in the prologue is not meant as just a bit of Cerebus. It is, to the author, the most significant thing he has ever written, a true account of the origins and destination of all life, matter, and spirit. So there's that.
I welcome author annotations, such as are included in the book. It is nice to hear from the author about his work. The autobiographical bits can stray into odd territory, but as a reader I like seeing the author in dialogue with his existing work.
I will conclude with how Dave Sim believes his enemies would portray him: "a brilliant but troubled come book creator who went insane and ruined his 26-year-long project." Comparing Church & State to Form & Void, that does not seem unfair. At the end of the series, let us pause a moment to reflect on the previous volumes.
The first half is worth reading. Cerebus, the first volume, reminds me of the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: necessary teething for the author and the audience to get the ball rolling, but not of much value on its own. High Society and Church & State are probably 4s; I should re-read them to check. Jaka's Story is at least a 3. Melmoth is just authorial self-indulgence, pondering Oscar Wilde for a year, basically a waste of that year of the story; the moments with catatonic Cerebus are the only parts worth reading there.
If you get those first five volumes, along with Cerebus Zero, you are set. The 112/113 double-issue would have been a great ending for the series, and you can take Jaka's Story as an optional, separate tale.
The second half is spottier. The four books of Mothers & Daughters were not as successful as the earlier volumes; they are where the author's other interests begin to take over the story, culminating in explicit authorial self-insertion. Not healthy. Flight and Women, as I recall, were 3s; Reads is interesting, but it goes to an odd place; Minds is where the story goes off the cliff (somewhat literally), but you will read it if you read as far as Reads. Guys is its own kind of male thing, but that is about as far as you can go with considering the series worthwhile. Ahead lies more authorial indulgence, with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, although I admit that crossing Torah re-interpretation with The Three Stooges was an inspired approach.
Somewhere in Mothers & Daughters or Guys, the story stops being about Cerebus and turns into "Dave Sim's view of life and relationships," later to evolve into "Dave's Sim's view of religion and modern society." That might also be interesting to read, but using the characters from Cerebus as sock puppets for that is sub-optimal. If you want that, you can just read "Tangent" and some sections from Reads here.
These things happen to authors. It might have been healthier to take a few years off and write these other books, leaving Cerebus out of them, then return and let him have his story. In the end, Cerebus #300 published as scheduled, but I don't know that Cerebus got his 300 issues.
Amazon link
Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)
You could do worse than to read the first half of Cerebus. You could do better than to read the second half.
This is Cerebus's Last Day. An aged and senile religious leader, he spends his last day in his bedroom, talking to himself and trying to see his son one last time.
There are two things going on in this book. There is the story of Cerebus's last day. There is also quite a bit about Dave Sim and his view of the world, partly connected to and partly taking over the story. Of these two, the story is the better part.
To get the most from the story, if you read this, I recommend skipping anything that looks like a block of text. Those are Dave Sim, not Cerebus. That means the introduction, prologue (through page 40), and annotations. Cerebus's last day is much clearer without having those intrude. All you need from the prologue is that Cerebus has dreamed a new book of scripture, one that goes from the creation of the universe through the end of all humanity; reading Chapter 8 of the prologue will make the last few pages of the book clearer, but all you really need is that "going into the light" is probably Hell, while having the will to reject the light is freedom and realization of the divine purpose.
It is not a spoiler to say that Cerebus dies. His death was foretold years and years ago, both in the story and out. The question is how that happens. I think it fair to say that this is not how Cerebus would have wanted it. Such is life.
As a story, it is small and fairly weak. It is intentionally slow, using film techniques to draw out action and show how slowly everything is going. I suppose taking an entire year's worth of comics to show one day makes it redundant to mention that things will take a while, but some people have very action-packed days. There can be many events, or at least many significant thoughts.
Here, not so much. Things have come to a poor end for Cerebus. The nation and church that he ran have long since fallen under others' dominions. Things have gone down the tubes, and his last actions and thoughts fall safely within the categories of futile, pitiful, and self-defeating. This is not going to be a fun ride, and it is going to drag on longer than even its participants wish.
A few examples? We spend four pages watching Cerebus pick up a piece of paper. Other page-long adventures include putting on pants, climbing into a chair (a few times), and attempting flatulence. Meanwhile, we are steadily losing background as Cerebus is losing focus.
The backgrounds, I should note, and great. Gerhard always excels. Dave Sim notes that backgrounds fade partially to show Cerebus's fading but partially to save drawing time before they lose heart. It works. If you want all of Gerhard's work in this book in a nutshell, follow the band around the covers of the book. That is Cerebus's room. Above it you will see the external view.1
Neither artist's work is particularly on display in this book. We have lots of negative space, black or white, and most of the images are of the same things (the room, aged Cerebus). To that extent, it fails as a comic book/graphic novel. This part of the story might have excelled in a different medium.
Dave Sim's art is fine as well, but most of it seems to be a heavily wrinkled Cerebus; I should appreciate the fine detail work, but given the annotations, I think Mr. Sim understands that much of it was done for their own satisfaction, rather than with the expectation that the audience will notice. The last issue or two worth, though, has really great Dave Sim art. Once Cerebus is in bed, things work much better.
In terms of the story, note that most of a century has passed since we had a story. The previous volume had a long time lapse, and this does it one better by skipping over a half-century in which Cerebus got married and had a child, now long since grown. It is an unusual storytelling choice to skip that, in favor of using a year's worth of issues on one day. Then again, marriage and family life are not interesting subjects for the author, except as tragic farce.
And as for that last day: rough way to end a twenty-six year project. The trajectory started heading downward in the vicinity of half-way through, and it accelerated, until we end in a mud puddle, unable even to wallow. Ozymandias had a better long run.
I am wrapping story commentary there. I assume you have already read the earlier volumes, or else why would you care how it all ends? The last volume stands on its own surprisingly well, since almost every character from the rest of the series is dead. You could start fresh here, knowing nothing. Don't.
On to author commentary. Gah.
On the first page, Dave Sim notes that he has "come up with The Origin of Everything (aka The Unified Theory which Einstein spent his intellectual life pursuing)," but this discovery has been suppressed by a Marxist-feminist conspiracy that runs the world/media/culture (unclear on that last part). This conspiracy is actively ignoring him in the hopes that he goes away, but he does not know how they will react when that plan fails.
I think that analysis speaks for itself, so I note that The Origin of Everything reads a bit like The Apocryphon of John, with anti-feminist overtones and a bit more explicit cosmology. The level of scientific understanding inherent is explained in the annotations: he wants to know what the universe is doing, not why one might or might not believe this account, working under the assumption that whatever astronomers and cosmologists have discovered will line up with his existing narrative. The science is explicitly fudged for storytelling purposes, which are metaphorical anyway, but note that the origin on the universe described in the prologue is not meant as just a bit of Cerebus. It is, to the author, the most significant thing he has ever written, a true account of the origins and destination of all life, matter, and spirit. So there's that.
I welcome author annotations, such as are included in the book. It is nice to hear from the author about his work. The autobiographical bits can stray into odd territory, but as a reader I like seeing the author in dialogue with his existing work.
I will conclude with how Dave Sim believes his enemies would portray him: "a brilliant but troubled come book creator who went insane and ruined his 26-year-long project." Comparing Church & State to Form & Void, that does not seem unfair. At the end of the series, let us pause a moment to reflect on the previous volumes.
The first half is worth reading. Cerebus, the first volume, reminds me of the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: necessary teething for the author and the audience to get the ball rolling, but not of much value on its own. High Society and Church & State are probably 4s; I should re-read them to check. Jaka's Story is at least a 3. Melmoth is just authorial self-indulgence, pondering Oscar Wilde for a year, basically a waste of that year of the story; the moments with catatonic Cerebus are the only parts worth reading there.
If you get those first five volumes, along with Cerebus Zero, you are set. The 112/113 double-issue would have been a great ending for the series, and you can take Jaka's Story as an optional, separate tale.
The second half is spottier. The four books of Mothers & Daughters were not as successful as the earlier volumes; they are where the author's other interests begin to take over the story, culminating in explicit authorial self-insertion. Not healthy. Flight and Women, as I recall, were 3s; Reads is interesting, but it goes to an odd place; Minds is where the story goes off the cliff (somewhat literally), but you will read it if you read as far as Reads. Guys is its own kind of male thing, but that is about as far as you can go with considering the series worthwhile. Ahead lies more authorial indulgence, with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, although I admit that crossing Torah re-interpretation with The Three Stooges was an inspired approach.
Somewhere in Mothers & Daughters or Guys, the story stops being about Cerebus and turns into "Dave Sim's view of life and relationships," later to evolve into "Dave's Sim's view of religion and modern society." That might also be interesting to read, but using the characters from Cerebus as sock puppets for that is sub-optimal. If you want that, you can just read "Tangent" and some sections from Reads here.
These things happen to authors. It might have been healthier to take a few years off and write these other books, leaving Cerebus out of them, then return and let him have his story. In the end, Cerebus #300 published as scheduled, but I don't know that Cerebus got his 300 issues.
Amazon link
Friday, March 21, 2008
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart
3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)
This sequel to The Mysterious Benedict Society is in many ways the opposite of the previous, using the same pieces in different ways.
The gifted children return. One year after their last adventure, Mr. Benedict has set up a celebratory scavenger hunt. When Mr. Curtain intervenes, Benedict himself becomes the object of the hunt, giving the children one week to find their mentor.
Personally, I dislike scavenger hunts and fiction about them. I always associate them with fairly poor television programs made for an after-school audience, filled with weak puzzles that people ponder for too long, so that the audience can feel smart and the producers can fill more time. This book takes the opposite tack: with brilliant children, the puzzles can be more or less impossible, with someone having the exact knack to solve it. You can expect someone to understand a pun on foreign-language locations, find jigsaw puzzles in abstract art, or instantly anagram phrases. Bonus: you can still have puzzles that take a little while to ponder, because two of the children are intuitive rather than intellectual, so they just need time to reflect on what lies hidden. It just comes to them, and you might see the trick quickly too.
You can imagine my disappointment when I realized that this book was a scavenger hunt narrative. Maybe I should have read the back of the book. It was the same problem as the last book: I wanted to like it, but I didn't. I had decided to give it a 3 as a good example of its type, which it is, but I was going to set it aside before finishing it.
And then half-way through, it gets much better. The first book had a great opening followed by an interminable second half. I found the pacing of the first half odd and off-putting, but the book comes into its own once Milligan appears.
The book changes quite a bit at that point. The scavenger hunt dies down. After spending the entire first book in The Institute, we have a continent-spanning search for the first half of book two (which still feels stilted); we then settle down into a smaller location for our concluding chapters, and it works great.
The book has several prominent examples of Chekhov's Gun. The genre-savvy reader will recognize elements that are introduced prominently early on, perhaps repeated as colorful details later, and then disappear for hundreds of pages before being needed at the end.
The character development elements were small but well done. Shaving Sticky's head was probably unnecessary. Constance gets to be a real character.
Amazon link
Expected publication: May 2008
This sequel to The Mysterious Benedict Society is in many ways the opposite of the previous, using the same pieces in different ways.
The gifted children return. One year after their last adventure, Mr. Benedict has set up a celebratory scavenger hunt. When Mr. Curtain intervenes, Benedict himself becomes the object of the hunt, giving the children one week to find their mentor.
Personally, I dislike scavenger hunts and fiction about them. I always associate them with fairly poor television programs made for an after-school audience, filled with weak puzzles that people ponder for too long, so that the audience can feel smart and the producers can fill more time. This book takes the opposite tack: with brilliant children, the puzzles can be more or less impossible, with someone having the exact knack to solve it. You can expect someone to understand a pun on foreign-language locations, find jigsaw puzzles in abstract art, or instantly anagram phrases. Bonus: you can still have puzzles that take a little while to ponder, because two of the children are intuitive rather than intellectual, so they just need time to reflect on what lies hidden. It just comes to them, and you might see the trick quickly too.
You can imagine my disappointment when I realized that this book was a scavenger hunt narrative. Maybe I should have read the back of the book. It was the same problem as the last book: I wanted to like it, but I didn't. I had decided to give it a 3 as a good example of its type, which it is, but I was going to set it aside before finishing it.
And then half-way through, it gets much better. The first book had a great opening followed by an interminable second half. I found the pacing of the first half odd and off-putting, but the book comes into its own once Milligan appears.
The book changes quite a bit at that point. The scavenger hunt dies down. After spending the entire first book in The Institute, we have a continent-spanning search for the first half of book two (which still feels stilted); we then settle down into a smaller location for our concluding chapters, and it works great.
The book has several prominent examples of Chekhov's Gun. The genre-savvy reader will recognize elements that are introduced prominently early on, perhaps repeated as colorful details later, and then disappear for hundreds of pages before being needed at the end.
The character development elements were small but well done. Shaving Sticky's head was probably unnecessary. Constance gets to be a real character.
Amazon link
Expected publication: May 2008
Sunday, March 09, 2008
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
His Dark Materials, volume 2
Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)
Many authors cannot start a book. Unless you come highly recommended, you need something good early to gain the benefit of the doubt. Philip Pullman, a frequently recommended author, still writes books that draw you in immediately. If you can read a half-dozen pages of The Subtle Knife without wanting to read on, you should stop visiting this site because our tastes in books are insurmountably different.
We meet Will Parry in that opening. His mother may be paranoid and OCD, but that does not mean no one is after them. Perhaps it has something to do with his father, an explorer...somewhere. Setting off to find help, Will finds Lyra, and begins a journey through a haunted world that is the gateway to a million more.
Will is a strange sort of equal and opposite to Lyra. He is her male counterpart, more introverted, focused, and violent. They both have a strong sense of agency, combined with the standard need for children to save the world from dangers that adults cannot or will not. I described Lyra as an untamed animal of the wilds, the sort who spent her childhood playing in the mud while Will was parenting his distressed mother. Will is his own sort of animal, a hunter prowling along bars he cannot fully escape. Lyra is a liar, whose magical tool tells the truth perfectly. Will is a fighter, whose magical tool kills perfectly.
As characterization, this book is worse than The Golden Compass. Will is a far less complete character that Lyra. He keeps his cards close to his chest, not always showing the audience. Lyra fades as a character too, faring poorly while sharing the spotlight. It is as if Will's agency and direction come at the cost of hers, and by the end neither has much.
The image of a predatory cat in a cage comes to me for Will. He is quiet, watching, expecting to need to strike. But the bars are always there. He is trapped in himself, trapped by circumstance, geographically trapped despite being able to enter other worlds. Lyra's adventure took her across a hemisphere and into another world, seemingly at a constant run. Most of Will's adventure is in a single city, even as it echoes into another world. There is still running, but it is often running in place.
We see others, spending time with witches and an aeronaut. You know Serafina and Lee from the last book, but they are more of narrative devices than characters. They have roles to fill, backstory to flesh out, and action to provide in an otherwise constrained story. They seem to know that they are not the protagonists. (Lee does get his due with a great chapter late in the book. He gets to make one of the book's great moral points under the guise of being amorally pragmatic.)
As for the adventure itself, it works. The events are more focused than in The Golden Compass. We re-tread the same ground, and several times the book refers to stairs worn deep with centuries of steps. Lyra's battles involved zeppelins and armored polar bears under an endless sky; Will fights barehanded in a hallway. His world is smaller, more human, and more visceral. Compass's megalomaniacs fall into the background, while Knife brings more conventional madness and apathy. It is more personal and real.
The quality of the central narrative declines as the book goes on, as the characters are caught in events they do not understand. There is capitalized Destiny at work, with people drawn by inexplicable forces or pushed by laconic oracles. Lyra somehow becomes a shrinking violet, while Will starts to look like Frodo on bad day in Mordor. It looks like the third book's presumably event-driven plot has already started consuming the second book's character-centric story.
Events spiral as we approach the end of the second book. You can tell that the author has already sold the third, because there is no way things can be wrapped up in the pages left. And there it is, only missing "to be continued." It ends the way that second parts of epic trilogies usually do, a good example of its type, and the third book will determine whether the story started here succeeds.
If the writing were not so good, I would here reserve the right to change the rating based on how the third book turns out. Even if Ewoks save the day in the next book, The Subtle Knife is worth reading for itself. I might bump it to 3.5 upon reflection; there are great passages, but the whole is a bit of a millstone for the soul. If you enjoy well-written suffering and oppressiveness, this could be a 4 for you.
I was told that the story goes over the cliff into an anti-religious screed. So far, still not there. It dances along the edge whenever Ruta Skadi comes on-stage, but otherwise pays only lip service to the looming war until events spiral at the end. The pagan descriptions are significantly more sympathetic, even when describing acts of cruelty. One chapter demands that the second movie be made, however, just for the moment when we find out that James Bond has set out to kill God. Film critics should not be denied that line.
The religious allegory is clear but weaker than I expected. Names like The Authority and Magisterium are thin covers, but they lack the content required to make the connection compelling. The Magisterium is an explicitly religious organization whose only religious connection seems to be using some theological terms; it comes across as an authoritarian group, not a real church. Its only teaching seems to be, "There are some questions not to be asked." It is not much of a strawman.
And on a side note, is it just me or are magical powers multiplying? When we started this series, a few people had uncanny talents and there were some witches. By the end of this book, Mrs. Coulter is charismatic enough to make people fly by waving her arms. But we've lost whatever magic is needed to make a second Knife.
Amazon link
His Dark Materials:
Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)
Many authors cannot start a book. Unless you come highly recommended, you need something good early to gain the benefit of the doubt. Philip Pullman, a frequently recommended author, still writes books that draw you in immediately. If you can read a half-dozen pages of The Subtle Knife without wanting to read on, you should stop visiting this site because our tastes in books are insurmountably different.
We meet Will Parry in that opening. His mother may be paranoid and OCD, but that does not mean no one is after them. Perhaps it has something to do with his father, an explorer...somewhere. Setting off to find help, Will finds Lyra, and begins a journey through a haunted world that is the gateway to a million more.
Will is a strange sort of equal and opposite to Lyra. He is her male counterpart, more introverted, focused, and violent. They both have a strong sense of agency, combined with the standard need for children to save the world from dangers that adults cannot or will not. I described Lyra as an untamed animal of the wilds, the sort who spent her childhood playing in the mud while Will was parenting his distressed mother. Will is his own sort of animal, a hunter prowling along bars he cannot fully escape. Lyra is a liar, whose magical tool tells the truth perfectly. Will is a fighter, whose magical tool kills perfectly.
As characterization, this book is worse than The Golden Compass. Will is a far less complete character that Lyra. He keeps his cards close to his chest, not always showing the audience. Lyra fades as a character too, faring poorly while sharing the spotlight. It is as if Will's agency and direction come at the cost of hers, and by the end neither has much.
The image of a predatory cat in a cage comes to me for Will. He is quiet, watching, expecting to need to strike. But the bars are always there. He is trapped in himself, trapped by circumstance, geographically trapped despite being able to enter other worlds. Lyra's adventure took her across a hemisphere and into another world, seemingly at a constant run. Most of Will's adventure is in a single city, even as it echoes into another world. There is still running, but it is often running in place.
We see others, spending time with witches and an aeronaut. You know Serafina and Lee from the last book, but they are more of narrative devices than characters. They have roles to fill, backstory to flesh out, and action to provide in an otherwise constrained story. They seem to know that they are not the protagonists. (Lee does get his due with a great chapter late in the book. He gets to make one of the book's great moral points under the guise of being amorally pragmatic.)
As for the adventure itself, it works. The events are more focused than in The Golden Compass. We re-tread the same ground, and several times the book refers to stairs worn deep with centuries of steps. Lyra's battles involved zeppelins and armored polar bears under an endless sky; Will fights barehanded in a hallway. His world is smaller, more human, and more visceral. Compass's megalomaniacs fall into the background, while Knife brings more conventional madness and apathy. It is more personal and real.
The quality of the central narrative declines as the book goes on, as the characters are caught in events they do not understand. There is capitalized Destiny at work, with people drawn by inexplicable forces or pushed by laconic oracles. Lyra somehow becomes a shrinking violet, while Will starts to look like Frodo on bad day in Mordor. It looks like the third book's presumably event-driven plot has already started consuming the second book's character-centric story.
Events spiral as we approach the end of the second book. You can tell that the author has already sold the third, because there is no way things can be wrapped up in the pages left. And there it is, only missing "to be continued." It ends the way that second parts of epic trilogies usually do, a good example of its type, and the third book will determine whether the story started here succeeds.
If the writing were not so good, I would here reserve the right to change the rating based on how the third book turns out. Even if Ewoks save the day in the next book, The Subtle Knife is worth reading for itself. I might bump it to 3.5 upon reflection; there are great passages, but the whole is a bit of a millstone for the soul. If you enjoy well-written suffering and oppressiveness, this could be a 4 for you.
I was told that the story goes over the cliff into an anti-religious screed. So far, still not there. It dances along the edge whenever Ruta Skadi comes on-stage, but otherwise pays only lip service to the looming war until events spiral at the end. The pagan descriptions are significantly more sympathetic, even when describing acts of cruelty. One chapter demands that the second movie be made, however, just for the moment when we find out that James Bond has set out to kill God. Film critics should not be denied that line.
The religious allegory is clear but weaker than I expected. Names like The Authority and Magisterium are thin covers, but they lack the content required to make the connection compelling. The Magisterium is an explicitly religious organization whose only religious connection seems to be using some theological terms; it comes across as an authoritarian group, not a real church. Its only teaching seems to be, "There are some questions not to be asked." It is not much of a strawman.
And on a side note, is it just me or are magical powers multiplying? When we started this series, a few people had uncanny talents and there were some witches. By the end of this book, Mrs. Coulter is charismatic enough to make people fly by waving her arms. But we've lost whatever magic is needed to make a second Knife.
Amazon link
His Dark Materials:
- The Golden Compass (originally: Northern Lights)
- The Subtle Knife
- The Amber Spyglass
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